Lubuntu Composite Manager: xcompmgr

Lubuntu 11.04, 11.10. Will probably work for almost all flavors of Ubuntu.

In order to get apps like Docky and Synapse to work on Lubuntu, you will need a composite manager to handle window transparency. This doesn't ship by default in Lubuntu.

First, let's install the light-weight composite manager called xcompmgr. In the terminal, type:

sudo apt-get install xcompmgr

Enter your password and you're done.

However, installing xcompmgr is useless unless you set it to autostart at login. This part is a bit trickier. The simple method is to download the following .desktop file xcompmgr.desktop and place it in the directory:

~/.config/autostart

Hint: if you don't know how to show hidden files, simply press "[CONTROL]+h".

When you're finished, you should have something that looks like this. You might have other items or less items in this directory, but you should at least see the xcompmgr file.

Restart your system and you're compositing!

Did you find this post helpful? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay connected with Lubuntu Tips!